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Thursday, January 14, 2016

Resolve

I think my phone is going to leave me someday.

I turn it off for church and leave it off for days. When I finally power it on, I forget sometimes to adjust the volume from silence, so I soon misplace it and can't find it. I drop it often and don't even apologize, because I could care less. I leave it at home by its lonesome while I'm out and about. I let it die from sheer neglect and don't notice til it's too late.

Phones are just not my thing. I wish it could understand.

Sheesh. I'm cruel. But I really don't like to be disturbed. Unless it's my husband or my kids.

The way I feel about my phone is how I feel about a lot of things come January. Every January as other bright and energetic people are making resolutions, excited for the opportunities of a new year, I am stuck in the blahs, ala Bill Murray in Groundhog Day:

"Blah-ba-blah-ba-blah....there is no way this winter is EVER going to end..."

It's not that I feel that way about winter exactly. I am fortunate enough to live where spring usually begins flirting with us soon after New Year's. It's not about winter at all. Nor do I think it is entirely about post-Christmas blues or travel fatigue. I just feel the blahs about anything that doesn't involve puttering around my home doing simple tasks and enjoying simple things and doing virtually nothing innovative or exciting.

During Christmastime I was off Facebook, email and NPPKS for over a week. The longer I stayed away, the more I wanted to run away. I didn't feel the urge to wish anyone a merry or happy or jolly anything unless it could be done in person. And I didn't feel guilty about not getting online to write, because I had written a short reflection just before Christmas. My email, I knew, was collecting junk faster than an old white guy in overalls with a farmhouse just off the highway. I really didn't want to view that mess!

It turned into an avoidance game, you see, and I was pretty sure that I was winning. I lived in a temporary blissful world where life was soothingly simple and old-fashioned. I had long conversations and laughed with family. I ate fudge and gingerbread cookies. I read. I baked. I did housework. I played games with my kids.

All without a computer.

But it couldn't last forever.

Because then I began to get worried. This pattern repeats each new year; my January malaise affects my writing. I get the blahs quite acutely there, and it's enervating. After fighting through December to carve out time for it, resenting the busyness of that month, I simply don't feel like writing come the New Year. I don't make resolutions, but even my steady goals elicit no greater reaction from me than an, Eh...bleh...maybe next month!

What's a writer to do? Stop writing? Surely, it's not good to be simply a housewife and stay-at-home mom? I always ask myself a little too earnestly (as if anyone ever could be simply anything!). Could I possibly get to all those photo projects, make elaborate meals every night, plant an expansive vegetable garden and maintain an immaculate, clutter-free house if I did?